Castoffs

The She-Hobo; or

It’s Dead Jack’s Point of View!

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: Castoffs

Airdate: September 12

September 12, 1977

Written by Tony Kayden

Directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Nels gets drunk, and a plot to drive away a British kook is foiled by The Magic of Walnut Grove!

Oh, also Jack dies.

RECAP: Welcome to Season Four, and oh boy, is this a weird one. Here we go.

First things first. We have a new arrangement of the theme.

WILL: Finally! Oh, thank God, thank God!

At my request, we listened to it a few times.

WILL: Now THAT is a considerable improvement! Don’t you think?

ROMAN: Yes, Stepfather. 

WILL: Much more urgent, wouldn’t you say?

ROMAN: Yes. I like the horns backing up the rhythm.

(Roman is a French horn player himself.)

WILL: They dropped the “yadda-dadda-da-dah” trumpet riff, though. That’s weird, isn’t it?

ROMAN: But they added a slide whistle when Carrie falls. Which is awesome.

WILL: Yes, it is awesome. 

WILL: Do you think David Rose played the slide whistle himself?

ROMAN: Who else?

Who else indeed?

WILL: Ooh, look! Dorfler’s in the opening credits too –

DAGNY: Yeah, yeah, let’s just get on with it.

Humph, very well, we’ll get on with it. We begin with a quick shot of Jack the dog down by the creek, shaking his head. 

Laura runs out of the barn to ask Pa if she can go goof off.

Pa, who’s doing a watercolor of the surrounding mountains, or something, says sure.

But Ma pops from the door and sharply says Laura needs to clean the foxtails out of Jack’s ears.

DAGNY: OH YEAH!!!

WILL: What do you mean?

DAGNY: You KNOW what I mean. Jack is DEAD!

Spoiler alert, but yes, Jack is dead. He has just a few minutes left, so enjoy him while you can. Dags has started the countdown. 

Anyways, “foxtails” – not a thing I’m awfully familiar with – are the spiky tops of certain long wild grasses. 

The plants disperse their seeds by getting these “foxtails” snarled in the fur of passing animals.

Normally they’re harmless, but if they get embedded in the skin of the animal, they can cause infections that are sometimes fatal.

We’ve encountered foxtails on the show before. Way back in “Doctor’s Lady,” Doc was seeing Jack about a case of them, all the while unaware Stalker Kate Thorvald was spying on him – and formulating a plan to get him into bed!

I’d tell you more about what happened then; but that would be lame.

Laura suggests Ma ask Carrie, but Ma says Carrie’s helping her bake a cake.

DAGNY: Ha! That’s rich. I’m sure she’s essential to that process.

Ma tells Laura she’s been neglecting her pet lately. 

DAGNY: Oh, it’s The Olive and Mike Sheldon Story.

(Mike Sheldon is Olive’s pet tortoise. She left him here with us when she went off to college in Illinois last month.) 

(Alexander’s gone too – to a different college in Wisconsin.)

(Amelia too – Iowa.)

(But Roman is still here – our prisoner for another year!)

All right, back to the show. We change to a shot of what really looks like a set for one of those outdoor theater-in-the-round-type deals. 

There are two sort of ruined fireplaces, two trunks, a rocking chair, and a stool with a bag on it. It could be a set for The Crucible in a summer stock production, or something.

The resemblance to a theater set is heightened when a trap door suddenly opens in the middle of the ground.

WILL [to ROMAN]: Are you ready for this?

Kezia and Parrot Polly appear from the hole, accompanied by sort of “Greensleeves”-y Renaissance music. Very English, hey-nonny-nonny-type stuff. Harpsichord and all!

ROMAN: Oh my God.

WILL: What . . . the music?

ROMAN: The everything. The music, the bird on her head. . . . Who IS she? WHAT is she? Does she live in that hole in the ground?

We shall soon find out. But I think overall, Landon & Co. would be pleased with this reaction to Kezia’s first appearance.

But for those like Roman who don’t know, this is Kezia. She is, I would say, a late-middle-aged lady with the kind of merry/ruddy/alcoholic face that was popular with comedians in a faraway time.

She’s dressed normally enough for the period, though like TV’s Vera, she does wear what looks more like a man’s fishing hat than a proper bonnet.

And of course, on top of the fishing hat is Parrot Polly, a live crow.

Kezia is also British, speaking with what sounds to my untrained American ear like a Cockney accent. 

We know this because she’s wandering around the “room” talking to herself, or I suppose possibly to Polly, as she sweeps the ground with a broom.

Cut to a shot of the Walnut Grove thoroughfare, with Mrs. Oleson and Nels walking from the Mercantile towards the church, and Mustache Man approaching from another direction.

Ben Slick appears then, as do Mr. Nelson the Gray-Haired Dude and somebody with a bit of a tummy who we don’t get a good look at.

Nothing comes of this potential traffic jam, though, and as Harriet and Nels approach the church, a loud squawking voice goes, “MORNING!”

At first it’s not clear if it’s the woman or the bird speaking.

Either way, we see the hobbit hole/Shakespeare in the Park set where they live is right next to Groveland Congregational.

“Beautiful day, ain’t it!” Kezia screeches. 

The Olesons stop and have an embarrassed little conversation with her. Kezia explains she’s sweeping the ground because “cleanliness is next to godliness” (an expression dating back to the Eighteenth Century).

Then the crow says, “Amen.” I’m not 100-percent sure, but I’d bet money Landon himself is doing the voice.

Mrs. Oleson and Nels both seem horrified at the talking bird for some reason, and hurry into the church.

But Kezia just smiles and chuckles and waggles her eyebrows impishly.

Then, inside the church, we join what’s apparently a meeting rather than a service. A meeting of whom, exactly, isn’t clear.

Reverend Alden is presiding, and the topic is whether to invite Kezia to attend church with them. 

But the attendees seem to be a random grab bag of Grovesters rather than established town leaders or church elders or what have you.

In addition to Aldi and the Olesons, we have Miss Beadle, Mrs. Foster, Carl the Flunky, Rubberface Dorfler (as promised – yay!), and Johnny Cash Fusspot. 

Mrs. Foster and Carl look like they probably stopped at a local tavern before the meeting, if only there was one.

There’s also J.C. Fusspot’s sister, Not-Quincy Fusspot’s Rather Beautiful Mother.

(As you no doubt recall, she’s also Mustache Man’s girlfriend, and probably the widow of Not-Neil Diamond.) 

(Not-Neil Diamond, by the way, hasn’t been seen since “Founder’s Day.” The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved.) 

Finally, there’s a biggish tubbyish guy sitting behind the Olesons.

If you looked closely, you might have spotted him in the congregation when they were collecting for Mary’s surgery.

He was also in the queue to see the tax assessor in “Centennial.”

And both he and the Rather Beautiful Mother were in attendance when Aldi discussed the Galender Bros situation at Sunday services.

Dagny’s reaction to Biggish Tubbyish mystified us somewhat.

DAGNY: Oh my God! It’s Paul Rudd!

WILL/ROMAN: . . . Huh?

We did not see the resemblance.

DAGNY: No, I’m serious. If Paul Rudd wasn’t an actor and just let himself get old, that’s what he would look like. This is Paul Rudd as a normal middle-aged insurance salesman from the Midwest.

Hm, well, perhaps. You can judge for yourself, reader. 

And if you’re at all interested in the actual content of this scene, Mrs. O is making a loud argument that Kezia is insane and should be kicked out of town rather than invited into the church.

She describes Kezia as being “off her rocker.” According to Grammarist, this is probably anachronistic, though not by much.

(The metaphor refers to an electrified trolley “rocking” away from its power source and not to a rocking chair, as is commonly thought.)

Dorfler pipes up and says even Kezia’s horse, Clyde, is nutty, because he’ll only eat junk food rather than proper fodder. And sorry to all the Dorfler lovers out there, that’s his whole part in this one.

The Bead says Kezia seems harmless to her. (And that’s it for her part in this one). 

But Mrs. Oleson points out that “looks can be deceiving.” (Variations on this saying have been around since the 1600s.)

Rev. Alden of course is in favor of inviting Kezia, but Mrs. O shouts him down. She says he’s only in town for two weekends out of every month, so his opinion barely counts for anything, and adds, “We have to live with that . . . that CREATURE every day!”

Aldi notes that “since the property was abandoned, legally she has every right to stay there.”

DAGNY: Wait, so is the old lady new to town? Or has she “always been there”?

WILL: She’s new, or new-ish.

DAGNY: Okay.

WILL: But the ruins right next to the church have “always been there.”

DAGNY: . . . Oh, come ON.

Yes, we’re four years into the show now (at least 20 years in Little House Universal Time) and no one has ever noticed or commented on there being a ruined living room mere feet away from the school/church and playground. Wouldn’t the kids have played in it? Especially if it has a trap door?

I’m also not sure about a “finders keepers” rule for an abandoned property, but maybe in the Old (Upper Mid-) West.

Gruesomely, Mrs. Oleson then suggests if Aldi won’t let the Grovesters drive Kezia out, they’ll “let nature run its course”; that is, simply letting her to freeze to death in the Minnesota winter.

The origin of “let nature take/run its course” is complex. It dates back to a fake Canterbury Tale that was added into the original book, in which the phrase was styled “Kinde [natural urges] woll have his cours” and presented as an “old saying.” 

Still, it is old, even if it isn’t real proper Chaucer.

In fact, some say it’s even older, attributing it to Laozi (aka “Lao Tzu”), who lived nearly 1,500 years or more before Chaucer.

Since both The Tao Te Ching and The Canterbury Tales were written in other languages (well, The Canterbury Tales only sort of was), it’s hard to say what the real source of the saying is.

Meanwhile, Laura is wrestling with Jack back by the creek. 

DAGNY: Even his ear is disgusting.

ROMAN: Yes, it looks like an open wound.

Jack is kind of showing a lot of ear today.

“Jack, you’re being stubborn as a goat!” she yells. (She would know.)

Jack breaks away from her, then returns carrying some small brown chew toy.

DAGNY: His mouth is drooling! Ugh!

WILL: You love it when Nyssa drools.

DAGNY: Oh, but when she does it it’s so cute.

Laura screams in annoyance and runs off.

Left behind, Jack seems to be shaking oddly, but David is doing cheerful leaping pastoral “don’t worry” music, so please, don’t worry.

Laura runs through a summer wonderland until she encounters Nellie, Mary and Willie, who are just sort of chillin’ together in the forest. “Sorry I’m late,” she says.

ROMAN: What on earth are THEY all doing together?

Apparently this is the very important thing Laura needed to get away to do. She’s picked a bunch of flowers, and she and Nellie bicker briefly about whether she needs to bring them along.

DAGNY: I love that dress of Nellie’s.

WILL: Yeah. I think I read it was Arngrim’s favorite.

DAGNY: It’s really lovely.

Apparently these four old chums have decided to approach Kezia together. (You just have to accept these things sometimes and go along with it.)

And sure enough, suddenly they’re there at Kezia’s “place,” where the lady herself is sleeping in her chair.

Mary, who doesn’t get shit to do in this one again, announces they’ve come to welcome her to town. 

DAGNY: Why are they bringing her flowers?

WILL: Well, they’re being nice.

DAGNY: Yes, but WHY?

WILL: Well, they’re idiots.

Kezia wakes up and goes into this bonkers routine where she makes them knock on and open imaginary doors. She seems to have an invisible touch, in fact.

She introduces herself as “Kezia Horn” and the crow as “Parrot Polly.” Nellie points out she’s got the species wrong, but Kezia just blows her off.

Then Kezia and Polly have this long conversation. I can’t tell if Kezia is supposed to be drunk here, or if the actor is actually drunk here, or what exactly is going on here.

Kezia is played by Hermione Baddeley, a famous British actor and comedian. Her career started out in the old English music halls, then she made a break into movies and TV, playing Bob Cratchit’s wife in the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol, and having memorable comic bits in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Mary Poppins, Bewitched, Batman, Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels and Fantasy Island. 

(Love Boat too.)

She was a scene-stealing regular on Maude.

And I remember her as “Auntie Shrew” in The Secret of NIMH.

Though she usually played “lower-class” English characters, she herself married the son of a baron, for whatever that’s worth.

Anyways, Kezia invites the kids in for a fake tea party. Willie orders coffee, which I think is hilarious.

Handling an invisible tea set, Kezia says, “It was Whiskey Jake Curry what give me these cups. ’E knew I ’ad an eye for pretty things.”

ROMAN: She’s something else.

DAGNY: They must really have wanted to Disney-fy Little House. 

WILL: Yes, she’s very Pete’s Dragon. Shelley Winters must have been unavailable for the part.

Dropping H’s everywhere, Baddeley lays it on thick. But Laura, Mary and Willie have fun playing along with her delusions.

DAGNY: Willie’s hair always seems so unkempt.

ROMAN: Maybe he was like Landon and his hair was naturally enormous.

Nellie can’t help pointing out it’s all just imaginary.

DAGNY: I always wanted Nellie to go away, because I felt if she wasn’t part of the equation Willie’s character would be easily redeemed.

Kezia tells Nellie not to let the imaginary door hit her ass on the way out.

DAGNY: It’s so unfair. Nellie gets this beautiful purple dress and Mary and Laura look like they’re wearing washrags and potato sacks.

Nellie is very insulted and runs off.

ROMAN: She should grab an invisible ax and smash all the invisible fine things.

Kezia closes the fake door and shrugs, “Some people never remember to close the door.”

DAGNY: How did she wind up in Minnesota? I don’t believe England would have let her go. The British love nuts like this. They’d have forced her to stay.

Back at the Little House, Carrie is “helping” Ma frost the cake.

DAGNY: Oh my God!

ROMAN: That’s so disgusting.

DAGNY: She’s even spreading with the same side she licked!

ROMAN: Awful.

Laura and Mary come running in, all excited from Kezia telling their fortunes. She apparently told Mary she’d have a huge family one day – eep!

Quite coldly, Ma confronts Laura about not obeying her commands in re Jack’s foxtails.

Laura goes back outside to find him, but first we get a big fucking close-up of Michael Landon’s naked, sweaty arms, shoulders and back.

ROMAN: Oh my God, Landon!

DAGNY: OH YEAH, LANDON!!!

Notably, this is the first time Charles has appeared in his stripper suspenders since Season One.

Pa tells Laura Jack’s sleeping in the barn; but when she goes in, she finds him dead. 

Melissa Gilbert is really good in this one.

Pa comes in, but if you can take him seriously in this getup, you’re stronger than we are.

DAGNY: You can even see the VEINS in his chest! 

ROMAN: The music is intense.

WILL: Yes. “Goodbye Old Friend,” aka “Dead Jack’s Theme.”

After making a bunch of dopey dog-lovin’ faces, Pa turns to comfort Laura.

DAGNY: Laura can’t even hug him, he’s so sexualized.

Pa says Jack died of old age. That is possible, especially since we don’t know how old Jack was when they left Wisconsin for Kansas in 1870. 

It’s hard to judge how likely it is, given our imperfect dating system. Jack might only be around 50 years old in dog years at this point, or he might be more like 200. 

I’m sure the lifespan of a working country dog could have been shorter than 50 dog years in those days; but I do think Jack’s shaking throughout this episode suggests the foxtails were at fault.

WILL: So this makes Laura a murderer.

ROMAN: Yeah. Twice if you count Baby Freddie.

Then Laura and Pa do hug.

DAGNY: Yuck. Tears, sweat, snot and glue, all combining over his chest.

In addition to emitting all of the above from his body, Pa is also spewing sentimental blither-blather from his lips.

DAGNY: I don’t want you to misunderstand, I do NOT approve of his costume choice here. I can’t get comfortable with it, even if I am happy Jack’s dead.

WILL: So . . . half-naked Michael Landon kept you from enjoying the death of a friendly dog?

DAGNY: That’s right.

Now, if that doesn’t capture the Walnut Groovy mindset in a single exchange, I don’t know what would.

Jack’s funeral arrangements are thrown together, and then we’re there, graveside.

WILL: Ah, see, Pa put on a shirt now.

ROMAN: But it’s not tucked in. He must have dressed in haste.

Dags went on quite a tear at this point.

DAGNY: No, it’s an aesthetic choice by Landon the director. This one was Landon, right?

WILL: Of course.

DAGNY: Yeah, no other director on this show would set up a shot like this. The camera is down in the grave. It’s Dead Jack’s point of view!

ROMAN: Okay.

DAGNY: Then you have the holy trinity of Pa, Ma and Laura. Which, it doesn’t even make sense for it to be just the three of them in the shot. Where is Carrie? Where is Mary? He was their dog too.

WILL: I don’t know.

DAGNY: I do. I know. They’re not there because it would ruin the composition. Landon probably spent a year working it out. Whoa, did you see that? Back it up!

We backed it up.

DAGNY: Did you see that, how Pa’s white shirt is blowing in the wind. He looks like . . . AN ANGEL. You should be writing this down.

WILL: I am writing it down!

DAGNY: And look at Laura in contrast. Now it makes sense that she’s dressed so drably. She’s dressed in the color of the earth. . . . She’s dressed in the color of Jack’s GRAVE! 

DAGNY: You see, the Ingallses are PEOPLE of the earth; not like Nellie and Mrs. Oleson with their purple dresses and stupid feathered hats.

ROMAN: You’re right. Nellie and Mrs. Oleson are the Skeksis.

Since Dags guessed the director, I can now tell you the writer of this one was Tony Kayden, who also wrote “The Voice of Tinker Jones” (with Michael Russnow).

Laura stays behind to say goodbye to Jack. She says she’ll say a prayer for him every night.

DAGNY: Pray for him? Why? He’s dead.

WILL: You’re just like the minister of my church growing up. He told me saying a prayer for the dead was blasphemous. I told him I said a prayer for my grandma who had just died and he told me it was fucking BLASPHEMY. That’s one way to chase kids away from religion, I guess.

Lovely music takes us to commercial.

Okay, we’re back, and now it’s Sunday! Hard to believe so much happened in just a single day, but they know how to work the magic on Little House, baby.

The Grovesters are arriving at church in haphazard combinations, as usual.

Blink and you’ll miss ’em, but almost sneaking into the church are three new major characters!

We’ll get to who they are in a moment. 

Aldi comes out onto the steps and stands quivering stupidly and staring at Kezia.

WILL: Is he in love with her?

ROMAN: “Why don’t ya kiss her steada talkin’ her to death!”

Eventually he goes back in, and they immediately all launch into The Lord’s Prayer. 

WILL: Isn’t The Lord’s Prayer usually more of a “grand finale” in church services? It was in mine.

DAGNY: Mine too.

As the prayer continues, we see Kezia has fallen to her knees and is muttering along. Or muttering something, at least.

WILL: It’s Cavalleria Rusticana again. Inneggiamo, il Signor non é morto! . . .

Rather surprisingly, we then cut to a city, though whether it’s Mankato or Sleepy Eye or someplace else remains to be seen.

Charles is doing freight duty and picks up a big package, apparently of bacon.

As the Alamo Tourist from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure helps load the wagon, the packing clerk or whatever he is starts yelling at a stray dog of black and white.

The actor playing the bacon-packing clerk is John Brandon, who was a regular on The Bold and The Beautiful for a time. Typecast as police officers, he also appeared in Scarface and on Dynasty, Hill Street Blues, Diff’rent Strokes, and Tales From the Darkside. 

Most significantly, though, he was in “The Tenth Planet,” a Doctor Who story that saw the final appearance of William Hartnell, the First Doctor.

It was also Brandon’s final appearance on Doctor Who, as he became the very first victim of the Cybermen!

Charles drives off through the town. There aren’t really any clues where it is – one building is painted with the name J.B. Tyler & Sons, which doesn’t help a great deal. (Some relation of Big Jim Tyler from Season One?)

Another sign reads Muldoon’s Saloon.

However, if you look closely, some of the crates at the Fulfillment Center are marked Hong Kong. 

Now, as I’m sure you recall, when Charles swam up the river for his sneak attack on Elmsville during The Great Mountain Fever/Poison Ivy Pandemic of  ’81(C), he immediately fucked it all up by tripping over a pile of boxes from – you guessed it, Hong Kong.

So, I think it’s a reasonable assumption we’re in Elmsville now. Clearly, if there’s a hub of Asia/Minnesota trade in the Little House on the Prairie universe, this is it.

Anyways, as Charles drives away, the dog hops on the back of the Chonkywagon, Solomon-Henry-style.

WILL: Now this is more like Annie.

Out on the road, the dog jumps onto the driver’s seat next to Charles, who immediately kisses it on the lips.

WILL: Ugh, did you see that?

DAGNY: Yes. This is a disgusting one.

Charles shows no inclination to toss the dog, instead calling him “you little bandit” and exhorting him to “enjoy the ride.”

Then off they drive towards Grand Teton National Park, or something.

Meanwhile, back in Walnut Grove, Doc Baker is examining a big muscular guy in pink long johns (and pants). For in case you missed it when he flew by on the church steps earlier, this is the debut of Jonathan Garvey!

And maybe this is a good place for a little behind-the-scenes talk. At the end of Season Three, Victor French, our beloved Mr. Edwards and a frequent and more than competent director on this show, left to take the lead role on a new ABC sitcom called Carter Country.

I don’t think I ever watched Carter Country. The plot doesn’t sound familiar. Apparently it was a sitcom all about racism in the South, with French as a veteran Georgia cop paired with a young Black partner from the big city. Lessons are learned by all. 

Probably not the sort of thing I would have watched, but I dunno. These days, it just sounds . . . nice. Nicer than that Jason Aldean song, anyways. It just goes to show if you’re the type of person who wants to address such topics in art, there are options. In this case, one artwork used humor to elevate a depressing topic while getting people to think about it a little more. 

And the other is a mean crybaby yawp applauding people for not thinking about issues more than they want to – which is not at all. You can’t tell me Landon would approve of that. It’s incompatible with Little House’s sensibilities.

I’m sorry, I know Aldean mentions the Little House TV show in another song, but that guy sucks. I actually went to his concert in Minnesota last month (it’s a long story), and his songs all sound the same to me too.

But then, Dags and I also went and saw Brandi Carlile again at the Minnesota State Fair. (I did not wear my mustard-colored trousers this time.) Wynnona Judd opened. Anyways, that show restored my faith in country-music people quite a bit.

Well, never mind all that. The story goes that Michael Landon was really pissed that Victor French left the show. 

And whether that’s true or not, he made some changes in response that would have big implications: eliminating not just Mr. Ed, but also Grace, Carl and Alicia, who by now have become major characters. 

I also bet French leaving influenced Landon’s thinking about Melissa Sue Anderson and Radames Pera and their suckems chemistry. (It goes without saying, I don’t mean any good kind of “suckems.”) 

After all, if Mr. Edwards was permanently out, why keep his wimpy whining son around?

Plus, the departure allows Landon to introduce a brand-new trio of characters who’ll leave their mark on the show in various ways. (I’ll tell you up-front I like the Garveys. More on them in a bit.)

[UPDATE: Treasured reader Ben writes:]

Did you know the first Garvey scripts were written for the Edwardses, and they just substituted their lines with the new characters? I thought it was most obvious when Garvey said he and Mary had been “jawin’.” Well, that and the drinking, which Garvey didn’t really do as much as Edwards after the first few scripts.

[I very much did NOT know that. Thanks, Ben!]

Well, anyways, unlike Jason Aldean, Carter Country didn’t become a super-success, and French and Landon eventually made up and he came back to the show. So I suppose we should be grateful Landon wasn’t so pissed that he killed Mr. Ed off.

And of course, the two of them would go on to do You-Know-What together afterward.

But for now, we don’t even know the Edwardses are gone yet, so let’s set that aside. Anyways, whereas French’s Edwards was a mountain man, Jonathan Garvey is more a mountain of a man. 

Olive writes from college that she considers him the fourth-hottest guy in the history of Little House (a high honor), after Charles, Adam, and Albert.

Garvey apparently is being treated by Doc for a bad back. Doc writes him a prescription.

DOC: Get yourself some soap liniment, camphor and wintergreen, and have Alice rub it in real good at night.

DAGNY: Is this medical advice or sex advice?

Garvey is of course played by Merlin Olsen, who was a highly decorated (okay word choice? I don’t “do” football) NFL player. 

People my age also remember him as the guy in the FTD flower commercials.

And of course, Olsen later did Father Murphy, which I didn’t watch myself, but which I know has a few fans out there.

Well, then we cut to Pa arriving home. Everything looks quite green, so I suppose that makes it spring of 1877 in the E timeline. Which makes sense.

And hey, I just noticed, Pinky is back too! Pinky has not been seen since “To Live With Fear,” Part Two – five episodes ago! That’s an eternity in Little House Universal Time; three years at least.

Ma tells Pa Laura is in the barn, and Pa says the new dog’ll cheer her up. He calls the dog, which comes running at once.

DAGNY: Did Charles give him obedience training on the way home?

WILL: He’s a very clever dog. He’s been living on the mean streets of Elmsville.

ROMAN: Yeah. No foxtails on him!

Laura is sulking and sniffling on the floor when Pa and Bandit come in. 

Wearing his trademark shit-eating grin, Pa says he got a new dog in Mankato. (Shit, there goes my Elmsville theory.)

Pa should know better. When he tries to introduce Bandit, Laura screams “I don’t want him!” and runs off. Kind of slowly, for her.

That night, Bandit whines and scrabbles at the front door whilst the Rose honks a harmonica at us.

Inside, the Ingallses are having dinner. Mary asks if they can let the dog in, and Ma says no, but Pa says yes.

“I’ll goo it!” slurps Carrie, and opens the door.

Unexpectedly, when Carrie sits back down she launches into a (for her) long stretch of dialogue.

CARRIE: We have to name him. . . . We could call him “Tom.” Sally North has a dog named “Tom.”

Carrie doesn’t mention she herself had a pet turkey called “Tom,” but I’m not sure her brain has the power to remember back that far. 

Mary points out Sally North’s pet Tom is a cat, not a dog. (See my theory about Carrie’s brainpower in the preceding paragraph.)

DAGNY: They never really gave Carrie a chance on this show, did they? Poor kid.

As for Sally North herself, she’s never been mentioned before, but I think she must be the Smallest Nondescript Helen of Them All. She’d be about the right age for a Carrie crony.

But back to the naming. Pa suggests “Bandit,” the name he came up with on the road.

Bandit leaps up onto Laura’s lap, and she asks to be excused without finishing. Bandit follows her to the ladder.

DAGNY: Is he gonna climb up after her?

ROMAN: Yeah. He’s evolving.

After a commercial, we return to the sound of the buzzsaw. I always find these saw scenes quite stressful, even if I know nothing bad is going to happen. Dagny and I both know people who’ve lost digits to them, though we didn’t witness the incidents ourselves, thank God.

Anyways, Charles and Jonathan Garvey are working together. So I guess Garvey works at the mill too. I know some people complain the Garveys don’t get a proper “moving to town” introduction story, and I think that’s fair.

Anyways, Garvey grabs his back in pain and shouts “Lord Almighty!” (Strong stuff for those days.)

Charles sensibly points out if Garvey’s hurt, he shouldn’t be working. I would sensibly point out Charles doesn’t exactly practice what he preaches where that’s concerned.

Garvey says he needs to take a break and get some “medicine,” then he limps over to a barrel and opens it.

ROMAN: Does he live in there?

WILL: Yes. That’s his Kezia hole.

Actually, it’s a water barrel in which Garvey has hidden a bottle of whiskey. As he’s glugging out of it, Mary and Carrie appear, and he hides it behind his back, accidentally spilling all the contents into the barrel.

Mary asks some dumb questions about what he’s drinking (Melissa Sue Anderson struggling as usual with comedy), then recommends Garvey visit Kezia, who can cure his back pain by folk medicine/witchcraft. 

Kezia didn’t mention any home remedies in her scene with the kids, but clearly some time has passed, since Charles has been to Mankato and back in the interim (which would take the better part of a week).

Mary and Carrie are headed to school, Carrie apparently having matriculated into kindergarten at last. (It’s about time. Linz and Sid were seven years old at this point.)

But first, they stop to talk to Kezia, who slurs, “’Uh? It’s a perfect day for ’angin’ out the wash.”

ROMAN: She’s harder to understand than Carrie.

DAGNY [as the Les Misérables chorus, Cockney-ishly]: “AT THE END OF THE DAY!”

WILL: You know, actually she’d make a good Madame Thénardier.

DAGNY: She’s a little too friendly.

Yes, Kezia is “’angin”” invisible clothes on an invisible clothesline.

WILL: So she’s actually insane? She’s not just doing this for attention, or to entertain people?

DAGNY: No, she’s actually mentally ill.

Then we hear Laura screaming abuse at Bandit, who’s followed her to town. (Two miles from the Little House, with her screaming at him the entire way?)

Like something out of a nightmare, Nellie and Willie appear from nowhere and start taunting Laura. She keeps screaming at Bandit, occasionally redirecting her screams at N and W.

WILL: This is pure chaos.

Again and again they chant “Laura’s dog is ugly as a hog, Laura’s dog is ugly as a hog.”

DAGNY: Did they just make up this rhyme on the spot? It’s fantastic.

Laura screams “He’s not my dog!” and even kicks at Bandit. (From about a mile away.)

DAGNY: I never liked the episodes where Laura was nasty like this.

Kezia takes an interest in what’s going on, and makes weird grimacing faces.

DAGNY: She could be Dawn French.

WILL: Yeah. Or Mrs. Slocombe.

Eventually, Bandit lopes off alone. He appears to be a border collie mix of some sort.

The dog actor’s name was “Jeffrey,” and his trainer was Sharon Evans. Sadly, she never received a credit on Little House, but her resume includes a number of other interesting things, including The Bad News Bears, Wishbone, Walker Texas Ranger, and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, which I have VERY vivid memories of watching as a ten-year-old. (I don’t remember any dogs in it, though. Do Ewoks have dogs?)

In 2019, Mark of The Walnut Grovecast – a rich resource indeed for Little House fans – interviewed Evans, and she made a number of interesting points:

1. First, she said replacing Jack with Bandit was Landon’s idea, and that the rationale was keeping the show fresh rather than anything being wrong with Jack the character or the dog actor.
2. She also mentioned that “Barney,” the dog that everybody on the internet says played Jack, was actually the name of Jack’s double. It seems from her account Jack really was named “Jack”! This was news to me for sure.
3. As I reported last time, apparently Landon liked Evans’s own dog, “Cobber,” who had played the Random Savage Dog that attacks Willie in “Little Women,” and considered him for the part of Bandit. But ultimately he went with Jeff the border collie instead. 

Once everybody’s gone, Jonathan Garvey appears and sheepishly asks Kezia if she has any remedy for his bad back. Parrot Polly jumps onto his head.

DAGNY: I like Garvey. I prefer him to Mr. Edwards, actually. I always thought Victor French played it too much for the little kids.

Kezia forces Garvey to endure her “invisible door” routine before she’ll help him.

Garvey introduces himself, and Kezia says, “My name’s Kezia. Some people call me ‘Kizzy.’ Some people call me crazy. Some people don’t call me at all.” 

WILL: This one is quite funny, in a strange way.

ROMAN: Yeah. I just can’t believe they’re doing comedy plots on top of Jack dying.

Keziah – more commonly spelled with an H at the end than not – is a Biblical name that apparently was very popular in Britain and the United States during the Nineteenth Century. Keziah in the Bible was one of sad-sack Job’s daughters, but she doesn’t get to do much in the story.

Kezia cackles like Yoda. Then she starts stirring some non-invisible food over the fire. (Also like Yoda.)

WILL: I think she’s actually a pretty convincing crazy old lady. She reminds me of my voice teacher in college.

Garvey says he’s gotten “a passel full of remedies” for his lower back pain, but none of them work. (We know Doc doesn’t like to prescribe opioids.)

Kezia quickly diagnoses him with rheumatism, a term in use since the Seventeenth Century, even if it’s been applied fairly loosily-goosily at times.

Kezia recommends applying a combination of paraffin and mineral oil to the affected area with a brush before bed. 

Actually, it isn’t witchcraft. This treatment is still in use today; some claim it goes back to antiquity, though it seems it didn’t really hit the bigtime till World War I.

Then we get this hilarious exchange, probably the most memorable of the episode:

KEZIA: What kind of skivvies do you bed in?

GARVEY [sheepishly]: Well, uh, I’ll, uh, I’ll be in my red flannels. . . .

KEZIA: Them’s just the thing for keepin’ the ’eat in! Yeah. Oh – with the pain that low, be sure to keep your flap shut.

WILL/DAGNY/ROMAN: Oh my God, Little House!

Meanwhile, at the Mill, Charles is looking for Mr. Hanson, and a strange voice screams out, “He went home sick!” 

DAGNY: Oh no, does Mr. Hanson die too?

Charles is surprised to find the strange voice was Nels’s. 

Long story short, Nels is drunk from drinking out of the water barrel Garvey emptied his whiskey bottle into.

DAGNY: Oh come on. It was 750 milliliters in a whole BARREL of water! And he got drunk from a couple cups? 

Nels starts describing Hanson’s symptoms, but he keeps bursting out laughing.

DAGNY: Do you think Richard Bull taught “drunk acting” classes?

WILL: I sincerely doubt it. I don’t think he’s very good at it.

DAGNY: No, he’s terrible.

ROMAN: But it’s okay. This part’s just comedy for the little kids.

Actually, I was in a play in college where I was supposed to be drunk, and this is basically how I thought I should play it. Thanks for nothing, Little House.

And well, it is funny, if you’re a fan of this show. Good old Nels, drunk.

And Charles is even funnier than he is.

Charles reminds Nels that tonight’s the meeting “to decide whether we’re gonna let Kezia in the congregation.”

Back at the Little House, Laura is hanging clothes in the yard. (Non-invisible ones.)

Bandit comes up and drops something in her basket of clean laundry.

ROMAN: Is that a dog turd?

No, it’s Jack chew toy, but Laura doesn’t seem to realize things could be worse and just screams at him some more.

That night, they don’t show the meeting, only the aftermath.

DAGNY: Look at Aldi, dimming those lights. Classic Landon visual.

Alden laments to Charles that the town voted not to let Kezia in.

WILL: Would he really hold multiple meetings with everyone about whether to invite somebody to a service? What a waste of time! He would just do it. It’s the patriarchy, he doesn’t need anyone’s permission.

But Aldi describes himself as “caught in the middle,” despite being “the shepherd of the flock.”

DAGNY: Why’s he telling Charles this?

WILL: Charles is his sous-shepherd.

After Charles leaves, Aldi finds Nels, still shitfaced and snoring on the floor.

WILL: Come on. How many hours has it been?

Nicely, despite being drunk, or maybe because he is, Nels votes not to kick Kezia out. Or is he voting no to letting her in? I bet the former.

When Nels leaves, we hear him fall down the church steps, accompanied by a slide whistle in the orchestra. David’s never afraid to gild the lily, is he?

Cut to the Rev giving Kezia the bad news. Why does he need to talk to her about it at all? Did she even know they were talking about this?

WILL [as PARROT POLLY]: “Fuck off!”

But apparently the Grovesters are actually evicting her, which seems nuts. Think of all the horrible people they tolerate in this community!

Kezia gives a brief history of herself, saying, “I’m eighty years old [Baddeley was 72], outlived two husbands, been everywhere there is to be, seen everything there is to see.” 

ROMAN: It would be funny if she revealed she was a Doctor Who companion and came from Thirteenth-Century England by TARDIS. 

WILL: She’d be a good one, actually.

DAGNY: Seriously, how did she come to Walnut Grove? On foot?

WILL: Maybe she rode the rails.

ROMAN: Yes, a hobo-ess, or she-hobo.

Kezia rambles on for a while, noting she appreciates how welcome the Grovester kids made her feel. 

DAGNY: Do you think Landon thought this one up walking by people experiencing homelessness in L.A.?

WILL: It wouldn’t surprise me. He always sympathized with people rejected by life.

Aldi blushes and twinkles and quivers throughout her speech.

Then, looking happy as a clam (seems inappropriate to me, but whatever), Aldi departs.

David Rose gives us some equally inappropriate “humorous” music.

Meanwhile, Kezia looks about as happy as a death-row inmate who just finished her final lamb chop, or whatever.

After a commercial break, we see Laura begging Pa to let her go to town and hang out at Kezia’s.

ROMAN: This is Laura’s first old-WOMAN bestie!

But at Kezia’s, the old lady is packing up her (real) things. She hears Laura screaming at Bandit again, and looks over in time to see her actually hit the dog with a stick. (It’s more a twig than a stick, and she throws it from some distance away, but still.)

Kezia disapproves, and Laura tells her the story of Jack and Bandit. 

Kezia says that’s nice, my first husband Whiskey Jake died in a shipwreck, but you’ve got to get back on the old horse sometime.

She mentions her second husband was called “Smilin’ Willie Horn.”

Laura says she’s annoyed Bandit is always chasing his own tail, but Kezia says he’s just entertaining himself, since no one else cares about him.

Laura says, “Kind of like you pretending you have a real house when you don’t have any walls or a roof.”

WILL: Never confront a psychotic with their delusion! She’s gonna go on a murderous rampage!

But Kezia just compares herself to Bandit again and says it’s a bummer nobody loves them.

Laura instantly changes her tune and says she gotta go find her new favorite dog, Bandit.

WILL: She’s so easily manipulated.

Before she goes, she hugs Kezia and says, “I love you,” which is nice. For as much as Kezia divides fans, Baddeley and Gilbert are great in this scene.

Laura comes running through a field of goldenrod or something to find Bandit. She even falls, Carrie-style.

DAGNY: What a shot! Pure Landon again. But I suppose those flowers are fake, too.

She sees him at the bottom of a hill, but he runs away.

WILL: Is he going to go piss on Jack’s grave?

ROMAN: No, he’s gonna live with Fred and the goats.

Laura falls down weeping, but Bandit comes back right away.

WILL: He is a pretty cute dog.

DAGNY: Bandit’s awesome. He’s a huge improvement over You Know Who. But his black gums creep me out.

Finally, the Grovesters all arrive at church. Jonathan Garvey yells to Kezia that her back treatment worked.

She smiles, then sadly climbs up on a little wagon we didn’t know she had, and drives off.

ROMAN: Wow, David.

In church, they’re doing “Onward Christian Soldiers” once again. This closes the gap between it and “Bringing in the Sheaves”; now they’re tied up, 4-4! (I find this exciting, anyways.)

In attendance is pretty much everybody we’ve seen through this episode, though it’s worth noting the Gray-Haired Dude, who was seen approaching the church a moment ago, has disappeared. 

WILL: Am I crazy, or does the schoolroom seem smaller?

DAGNY: No, it does seem smaller.

Also worth noting is we get our first real look, or half-look at least, at Alice Garvey, played by Hersha Parady, a much-loved cast member whom, sadly, we just lost.

Parady was in episodes of The Waltons and Mannix, and if you’ll pardon my saying so, was sexy as hell in a little-known, rather disturbing film called Spring Night Summer Night in the late sixties.

She also appeared in another unsavory title, the Lifetime potboiler The Babysitter’s Seduction, which starred Keri Russell (TV’s Felicity), real-life creepster Stephen Collins, and Phylicia Rashad.

Parady was well-liked by her fellow cast members. She originally auditioned for Caroline but didn’t get the part. Then, in a development of weird resonance with this story, she became friends with Katherine MacGregor because they both were feeding the same stray dog where they lived in Hollywood!

MacGregor took Richard Bull to see Parady in a play, and they thought she was so good they came back recommending Landon cast her in some other part. And in fact, she made her first Little House appearance as Caroline’s sister Eliza Ann in “Journey in the Spring.”

Landon must have found her good to work with, because here she is again as Alice Garvey, though she doesn’t even have a line in this episode.

And then, next to the Non-Binary Kid in the front row, we see a red-haired kid who is supposed to be Andrew Garvey, even though he bears little resemblance to the character as we all remember him in his Patrick Labyorteaux form.

For his first two appearances only, Andy was played by an actor named Rusty Gilligan, who also appeared in Pete’s Dragon (!) and Eric Shea’s Whiz Kid (!!!). You can’t make this stuff up sometimes.

Though Gilligan would be replaced on Little House, he went on to have an interesting career as a professional wrestler, comic book author, and storyboard artist for many film and TV projects, including several Marvel films and The Walking Dead.

As soon as they’re finished, Laura comes rushing in. Wouldn’t Ma and Pa have made her come in when the service was starting?

Laura turns and makes an impassioned speech to the congregation about how they must persuade Kezia to stay because “she’s got so much love to give.”

WILL: This is idiocy.

“So what if she was different!” Laura snaps at the pious hypocrites before her. Melissa Gilbert cries quite fiercely in this scene – not an easy thing to do.

Behind her, Aldi ridiculously intones, “Seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7.)

Then he tells them Kezia is just like Jesus.

DAGNY: Oh my God!

Aldi says Jesus himself was a smelly wanderer of sorts. (Paraphrase.)

Then, quivering intensely, he says he supposes the Grovesters probably would have kicked Jesus out, too.

The Garveys, big Kezia fans obviously, make sad-face at this.

Annoyed, Mrs. Oleson rises to demand a re-vote, which she loses.

“Yahoo!” yells Garvey. “Come on, let’s go get her!” (Merlin Olsen is immediately a likable presence on this show.)

Laura rushes to go with him, and Aldi looks like he might orgasm on the spot as David gives us some Christmas-y “let us rejoice” music.

Then we see Garvey’s wagon racing to catch Kezia, even if it’s pretty clearly Jack Lilley made up to look like Garvey driving it.

DAGNY: Now this is like Maid Marion the Librarian.

(“Maid Marion the Librarian” was actually a kid’s show called Once Upon a Time, popular in Canada but actually produced in Nebraska. In the opening credits, a witch chases a librarian crazily through a forest.) 

(One note: Even though this road is heading south out of Walnut Grove, the view of the mountain range is exactly the same as when Charles headed west out of Mankato – over 80 miles from the Grove – earlier in this episode.)

The back of “Garvey’s” wagon is full of kids, including Not-Albert, who wasn’t even at church.

They catch up with her, and Voiceover Laura tells us Kezia stayed after all, “for the rest of her years.”

WILL: We haven’t had Voiceover Laura in a good long while.

ROMAN: Well, at least in Little House tradition, we can relax because we’ll never see her again.

WILL: . . .

ROMAN: Right?

WILL: Well . . .

ROMAN: . . . Stepfather???

WILL: Well, actually, she’s in like seven or eight episodes. I’ve kind of been keeping them from you.

ROMAN: Oh my God!

We end on a freeze-frame of Bandit, and that’s it for the first episode of Season Four. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT:

DAGNY: Yeah, Bandit!

WILL: You liked this one, huh? Even though you complained nonstop about how disgusting it was?

DAGNY: Yeah, it was great. Plus, I’m glad Mr. Hanson didn’t die.

UP NEXT: Times of Change